SINGING VIVALDI

Singing Vivaldi
after Robert Bly

How do I, the grandson
of Sicilian peasants
who bent the knee
yet cursed the old masters
behind their backs, still hope
to sit at the feet of Jesus?

I know how easily gardens
sprout weeds instead of produce,
so I harrow the field
with a long-handled hoe
and believe I will
sit at the feet of Jesus

Often I hear the songs
of old lovers trying
to lure me onto rocky shoals,
so I sing Vivaldi’s “Gloria” to drown
out their voices, and keep rowing
toward the feet of Jesus.

I start each day with a fresh page,
revise everything I do
before hitting the send key,
and dream about sitting
at the feet of Jesus.

Amber Waves

Growing up in Chicago,
I never understood the line
“amber waves of grain”
when I sang it in school choirs and sporting events,
even though I’d seen pictures
of vast, rolling Kansas wheat fields
in geography textbooks.
The term sounded poetic
and deep without meaning
anything to this city boy
who’d never been up
close to a real farm field.

The phrase lay fallow until
I took up bike riding after college,
went for longish country sojourns
past local farms. A revelation.
On late spring excursions I cruised
through ripening acres of winter wheat.
They were smallish plots by Illinois standards,
crowded stalks chest high,
almost like an afterthought among
newly plowed and planted corn fields,
but the shoots and ears of grain
undulated like ocean waves,
rustled like frothy breakers lapping
against clean, sandy beaches,
and I felt in those moments something
I’d only heard in the song.

Unintended consequences

Gardeners once
recommended
bush honeysuckle
as ornamentation,
for wildlife cover
and food. I appreciated
the privacy they
provided in our yard,
pruned and encouraged
their growth, even though
my neighbors hated the bushes
dividing our properties,
said they crowded
out native species,
said they didn’t make
us good neighbors.

Blizzard

Tall drifts lap against
garage roofs after
the great blizzard.
A white blanket
like a christening gown
settles over his neighborhood.

He trudges to the grocery store,
finds empty shelves, trudges back
past families pulling sleds with bundled
toddlers down main streets,
past skiers poling through
quiet intersections where stoplights
flash yellow, red, green.

Halfway home, he starts to sings
broken lines of blues songs:
BB King, Robert Johnson—
“the thrill is gone”,
“from four until late”.
He sings for the winters he’s forgotten
the lovers he’s discarded,
the hearts he’s broken,
his own cold, broken heart.

Snow plows and
front loaders work
their way around
burial mounds
of frozen cars and buses.
A thaw feels months away.

Frank C. Modica is a retired teacher who taught children with special needs for over 34 years. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dust Poetry, Mulberry Literary, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Willawaw Journal. Frank's first chapbook, “What We Harvest,” nominated for an Eric Hoffer book award, was published in 2021 by Kelsay Books. His second chapbook, “Old Friends,” was published in 2022, by Cyberwit Press.